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A Brief History of Ultra Violet

As humans are the only species not to be able to tell the difference between violet and purple, even Pantone calls Ultra Violet a “blue-based purple”.

When giving a background to the choice of Ultra Violet, they use examples of world famous incidents of purple from recent history. So let’s see why this colour should be celebrated.

25,000 years ago, a caveman, let’s call him Jim, lived around the Pech Merle area in France. He pulverized some manganese and mixed it with water or animal fat. Yeah, we have no idea why, either. Anyhow, he used the mixture he got to fingerpaint the walls of his seven-room mansion/cave, drawing woolly mammoths and spotted horses in violet. The paintings are still there - talk about good paints.

In the middle ages, purple and violet became the go-to colour of the royalty and church in Europe. In the 18th century, the wealthy started wearing purple to distinguish themselves from the poor. Thankfully, the advance of technology brought the colour back to everyone. In 1990, Crayola added the Royal Purple

to their list of colours.

Ultra Violet in Pop Culture

50 years ago, Jimi Hendrix released the song Purple Haze. The basic idea came from a book published a year earlier, talking about wars on the planet Neptune, where the sunspots would turn the sky purple. The book itself was based on a short story from 1957, so you could say the colour purple has been in pop culture for 60 years.

In 1972, the band America first used the term “Purple Rain” in their song “Ventura Highway”. 12 years later, Prince released a song, an album and a film by the same name. He claimed the phrase Purple Rain and its meaning was such a deep inspiration to him. Incidentally, when asked about the phrase and its meaning,

The words Violet and Purple mostly bring to mind an image of either Jimi Hendrix, or Prince. As mentioned before, the human eye cannot actually distinguish the two colours, even though countless handbooks and websites try and try again to tell the difference.

To make matters even more complicated, earlier this year, Pantone dedicated a colour to the memory of Price. Called Love symbol #2, it looks… well, much like Ultra Violet. Except it’s described as a “naturally purple hue”. Go figure.

So there you have it. A colour the human eye cannot distinguish, explained via another set of colours from the same hue range. Thankfully, they have also explained the colour in numbers, at least giving us half a chance of getting the tone right:

About the author

Karl is a PR guy with a few degrees and years of experience in all three sectors. He has been a lobbyist, a PR manager and a freelance consultant. His party piece is crisis communication, especially the first part - avoiding crises.